Housing Outcomes: An Assessment of Long-Term Trends

In the field of housing economics, there is a long traditionof evaluating housing outcomes for the entire populationand various subgroups by tracking four key variables, orconcepts: the physical adequacy of the occupied housingunit, the number of people living in the unit relative to thenumber of available rooms, the financial commitment tohousing expressed as a share of the household’s income, andthe household’s assessment of the quality of its neighborhoodand of its local public services. In this paper, weexamine trends in housing outcomes over the past twodecades for income quintiles, controlling for the age of thehousehold head and for tenure (renter versus owner) status.[...]